A mobile operating system release by Microsoft that’s worth rumouring about, and that actually gets people excited. Yes, it’s been a long time, but here we are. A number of Windows Phone 7 Series developer documents have supposedly leaked, which provide answers to some of the question we have – including the multitasking thing.
According to these documents, Windows Phone 7 Series is based on Silverlight, XNA, and the .Net Compact Framework. The main development tools for WP7S will be Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (complete with an emulator) and Microsoft Expression Blend (for the user interface side of things).
On top of this basic set of managed APIs, partners will have access to an extended set of managed APIs “meant to support extending the phone experience with functionality that is specific to a phone or a network”. Partners can also request access to a “defined subset” of native APIs. In addition, Microsoft notes that all applications must run within a sandbox.
And now for the big one: multitasking. Obviously, Windows Embedded CE 6.0 supports multitasking, but will developers be able to make use of it for their applications? According to these documents, the answer is yes and no. Developers will have to get approval from Microsoft before being allowed to use multitasking.
In other words, it sits somewhere between webOS/Android and iPhone. One of the crucial aspects will be whether or not Microsoft will actively prevent jailbreaking, and whether or not they will pressure the US Copyright Office into keeping it illegal (like Apple is doing). Hopefully, these documents describe the official, supported methods, while leaving the gate open for tinkerers and geeks to go all-out – at the expense of support, of course.
I think the dev tools are top notch and multitasking is possible, which is nice.
I just don’t have the faith in MS to approve ssh clients and other geek stuff.
We will see. At least it is a whole lot better than the Iphone.
If you can make it on .NET ofc they will approve SSH stuff. They won’t approve however changing internal parts of OS like they did in old series. I personally don’t mind since lot of “fixes” has been crap on OEM and hacker side. There has been huge whining on some devs that .NET can’t do all stuff, but I see this good thing since it makes platform more solid. But fact is that they are moving closer to Apple line where they provide sandbox to work and don’t approve going over that.
But so far I don’t find windows phone to be very exciting. A slightly better iPhone OS than iPhone OS, yet still with some of the same limitations. Will I be able to copy music to the device without Zune software? Install apps outside of Microsoft’s channels? So far the answers seem to be a big fat no to both. Boring.
Same here. It and iphone os are a bore. Android and meego are the only mobile platform right now that I really find exciting.